Judas Horse: An FBI Special Agent Ana Grey Mystery

367 Pages·2008·1.12 MB·English

by  Smith April

Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Part Two
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Part Three
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Part Four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Acknowledgments
A Note About the Author
Also by April Smith
Copyright
For FBI Supervisory
Special Agent
Pam Graham,
and for
David Freeman
In order to be a good warrior, one has to feel this sad and
tender heart. If a person does not feel alone and sad, he
cannot be a warrior at all.
—CHÖGYAM TRUNGPA
PART ONE
One
I am standing in the middle of nowhere, eating an oatmeal cookie, when the
word comes down the hallway like an ill wind that SAC Robert Galloway wants
to see everyone in his office. I glance at the TV monitors—no airplane crashes—
and figure this would be Galloway announcing with his usual gloomy hysteria
that some honcho is coming from FBI headquarters, or maybe, because of
budget cuts, we all have to bring our own copy paper.
The boss is waiting behind his desk, eyes downcast, fingertips tapping the
blotter, and he does not speak or look up until the office is jammed with agents
in shirtsleeves and wide-eyed administrative assistants. Cautious silence settles
in.
“Another blow,” he says, because there are all kinds of blows, all day long.
The silence twists tighter.
“Special Agent Steve Crawford is dead.”
A collective gasp of shock. Some of us clutch, as if kicked in the gut.
“We have a positive ID on his remains.”
“How?” someone finally asks.
Galloway clears his throat. Everybody knows Steve Crawford was his golden
boy and heir apparent.
“A hiker found a piece of jaw with a couple of teeth in a stream close to where
Steve disappeared.” He takes a breath. “The forensic dentist matched the root
furcation on the X-rays.”
“Cause of death?”
Galloway rubs his forehead. “He was an experienced hiker. A fall?
Hypothermia? We don’t know. He was hiking alone. It’s a remote location. You
have big animals, little animals; they’re dragging pieces hither and yon. The
coroner says the manner of death is a very difficult call, based on the evidence
and the length of time Steve was out there.”
It is like losing Steve all over again. Like those stomach-churning hours
thrashing through the soaking undergrowth up in Oregon just days after I’d come
back from administrative leave. I get sick just thinking about the empty yelping
of those dogs.
When Steve had failed to call his wife, Tina, from a solo hiking vacation in
the Cascades, his abandoned SUV was discovered at a trailhead. Four hundred
volunteers scoured the national park, casting a net of inquiry from Eugene to
Bend. Everyone from the Los Angeles field office went up on their own time to
knock on doors. Worse, indescribably worse, were the visits to Steve and Tina’s
house down here in Gardena—a dining table of foil-covered casseroles, two
dazed grandmas from out of town, a couple of sisters, the scent of baby powder
from the children’s room.
Standing now in Galloway’s superheated office, I do not want to hear the
aren’t-I-smart questions. What does it matter if the molars have fillings or not?
After weeks of uncertainty, there is no doubt. Steve is dead; at least his family
has something to bury.

S
even months before, a crazed detective on a suicide mission tried to drag me
into his car, and I shot him.
When you are involved in a shooting incident, they take away your weapon
and credentials. You are no longer identified as a federal agent, no different from
any bozo who cannot get past the metal detectors. There is an investigation by
the Office of Professional Responsibility and what we call “critical incident
training,” psychoanalyzing with other agents who have been through a life-
changing trauma. When they decide you are ready to come back, the tradition is
that another agent waits downstairs to “walk you in.”
Steve Crawford was waiting in the lobby of the federal building when I
returned after seven insomnia-racked months on administrative leave. In the FBI
family, Steve and I were closer than most, having graduated in the same class at
the Academy in Quantico, Virginia. Those who go through new agent training
together are eternally bonded in young blood. We had shared many defining
moments, but that image of Steve in the lobby is especially vivid, not only
because of his kindness to me on that first awful day back but also because later,
when he disappeared, I struggled to enhance every memory of him in the days
before, in search of a detail that might explain why.
A tall drink of water with ash-blond hair, thirty-eight at the time, he was
leaning on a counter with a distracted look, wearing a nylon strap around his
neck with a clip on the end for ID tags and keys. We each have one, personalized
with goofy stuff. His was red, white, and blue, studded with pins from police
departments around the country and two teddy bears—representing many cases,
years of work, and becoming a new dad. The lobby was crowded with civil
servants and foreign nationals, but in the light streaming down through the
atrium, all I saw was that strap, glinting with honor, and I was hungry for it.
“Everything all right?” he asked, touching my shoulder.
We were in the elevator. I stared at the floors ticking by.
“Why am I nervous? It feels like the first day of school.”
“You have plenty of friends on the playground,” Steve assured me.
After he got a law degree, and before he joined the Bureau, Steve played
outfield during two seasons of minor-league baseball. He was the real thing. He
knew all about disappointment and bone-wearying hard work. Sometimes I’d
ask, “How many times in your life do you think you’ve swung a bat?” and he’d
deadpan, “Not nearly enough.” No question he had the talent. If he’d wanted to
make the majors and cash out, he would have. It was just that Steve Crawford
cared more about helping people than he did about himself.
The elevator doors had opened and we stepped into a hall. Steve swiped his
card. I followed through the secure door, fighting an embarrassing impulse to
hold on to his hand. He got me through those first brutal hours; got my old
handcuffs back, the weapon in its clip, the case in black dress leather that holds
credential and badge. There was a drawer full of clean new key straps. I chose
red, white, and blue.
“Take a breath,” he said. “You’ll be great.”
Just as I was getting my feet back on the ground, Steve Crawford was on his
way to infinity.

T
he U.S. Federal Office Building on Wilshire Boulevard, isolated in a flat grass
tract behind a queue of concrete bunkers, is a soulless tower meant to keep
excitement out. If you had business here this morning, you might wonder at the
numbers of dark-suited judges, cops, and politicians gathered beneath the breezy
portico, and the white chairs set in rows. You might notice the Marine honor
guard, and the guy in the kilt with the bagpipes, and figure out this is to be the
annual FBI memorial service.
You could not know that SWAT is patrolling the perimeter, or, from the
chatter, that emotions are tender, because in this year’s program book there
appears a handsome new face, that of Special Agent Steve Crawford, beside the
tough-guy G-men who died in the thirties, and the earnest boys wearing skinny
ties, forever frozen in the fifties.
It is by now just a few weeks past the official identification of his remains.
Tina is seated with their children in the front row, wearing the same black silk
dress and shiny black straw hat she wore to the funeral, as if she has never taken
off her widow’s weeds.
It would be nice, before stepping into the merciless sunshine, to rest for a
moment in a circle of colleagues and let the feelings flow. I notice my former
best friend, Barbara Sullivan, the bank robbery coordinator, commiserating with
a couple of gals on her squad. They are whispering about Tina, and how she has
still not been able to clean out Steve’s closets, trading stories about going
through your childhood stuff and selling the house when your last surviving
parent has died.